During the G.I. Joe portion of the introductory presentation, a memorial clip was shown that mourned the loss of Renegades character designer Clement Sauvé. A piece of music was composed just for the presentation, a Sad Piano version of the Renegades theme song. It was very touching and I'm glad they put that together.

Hasbro has a new Totally Not Lego brand coming out soon called "KRE-O," and this section was put in a tiny room away from everything else and heavily guarded. No photographs were allowed. Hasbro was afraid that somebody from LEGO might get inside and find out how to make construction bricks or something. And then they put a bunch of photos of three of them in their press kits. Well, yeah, sure, but now LEGO will never know that Hasbro is also making kits of Jazz, Ratchet, Prowl, Cliffjumper, Megatron, Sideswipe, and Sentinel Prime!

Crap.

Anyway, it looks really neat, and I will probably get Ratchet. I loves me some Ratchet.

Addendum: "KRE-O" must be pronounced as if you are Dr. Cliff Huxtable yelling at your son. I've decided this.

Hey, I bet you thought you were getting Generations Scourge or RtS Grapple today, didn't ya? Tough noogies, yer gettin' ponies! Some things are just that important.

Goodbye, testicles.

McDonald's Happy Meals are doing one of their usual split boy/girl sets, this time between My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and some boring Tonka trucks or something. Man, fuck that Tonka shit. I want my fuckin' ponies. There's a McDonald's within three blocks walking distance of our house, much to the consternation of my health, but this particular location was being amazingly stubborn in getting this wave of Happy Meal toys in. There was a period last week where I was checking in on every lunch just in case, but no, there were just the remainders of whatever lame stuff was in the previous promotion. Maggie and I visited this McDonald's again today, and finally I had found my fuckin' ponies.

Flutteryshy and Pinkie Pie are 3D-challenged

Maggie suggested also getting a Happy Meal just so we could double up on pony goodness. (I know you can buy them separately from the food, but I always feel like a schmuck for doing so, for some reason.) She asked which ponies they had, and the helpful lady at the register grabbed three baggies from the bin. Maggie immediately picked out Applejack, who is one of the few ponies she tolerates. But me, I had to choose between Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. This was a really rough choice, and I was on the spot. I mean, Pinkie Pie is awesome. She's basically Robin (which is why Maggie hates her). And Fluttershy is adorkable. She's basically Dina (which is why Maggie hates her). No grown man should have to choose between his favorite ponies!

I was about to suggest, fuck it all, just give me three Happy Meals, but the register lady reminded us that we could buy the the third toy separately from the meal. I reluctantly agreed, despite my usual reservations. At least this would prevent me from having to make a real decision. We took our ponies home.

Yes, this is a photo of me combing a pony's hair.

The Happy Meal ponies are inarticulated, of course. They're solid plastic other than their "real" pony tail hair. Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy are sculpted to be seen from one side; the other side's face is sculpted over in their mane. I assume this is to preserve character model accuracy from the one side. The characters as seen on the television show are not designed strictly for three-dimensional depiction. They're Flash-animated (or facsimile thereof), and as such are designed for maximum abstracted cuteness, not hyper realism. The main being sculpted over one eye seems to work for the introverted Fluttershy, but it's disappointing that I can't witness the full insane fury of both of Pinkie Pie's eyes. Applejack retains both her eyes. Her mane is done up in a pony tail (so to speak), so it can be sculpted out of the way. I do wish Applejack had her cowboy hat. I think it's an important part of her appearance.

Each pony comes with their own unique display stand that is shaped like their individual Cutie Mark. Fluttershy's stand is a butterfly, Applejack's is an apple, and Pinkie Pie... I decided hers is a whoopie cushion. Maggie tells me, no, it's a balloon, you dimwit, but a whoopie cushion is way cooler. Each display stand comes apart in the middle to form two combs. You know, for brushing. This is pretty cool. Well, it'd be cooler if the teeth of the combs were, well, thinner, because it's not particularly conducive to combing hair if your comb's teeth are half a centimeter thick and fairly blunt at the ends. Still, it's a nice thought.

So as we were debuting the new site this weekend, Frumph says to me, hey, guess what, this is awesome. See all those folks with no avatars? Well, what if I told you that if you uploaded your own avatars to a certain directory and did some Comicpress magic, they'd be randomly assigned to unavatared users?

So I says, holy balls!

And so after crankin' out a handful every day since then, there are now a total of 24 avatars in the pool. If you don't have an avatar and you post, you'll get randomly assigned, say, Sodomuffin. And then every time you post, you'll keep that Sodomuffin avatar. (... at least until I upload a new image into the pool, which restarts the math and they all get switched around again)

Since I have so many, and I put so much work into them despite being tiny 64x64 things, I thought I'd show them to you big as a wallpaper. You are also free to crop them out and make your own avatars on other boards, so long as you give me credit. I am also wondering if maybe I should try to do this a print or a poster or something in the meager number of hours I have remaining before C2E2, but we'll see.